Playing with Trust in the Sharing Economy

This research work studies trust in the sharing economy, concretely in the framework of Airbnb. First, from a theoretical point of view, it is shown how Game Theory can be used to model trust through a dynamic game. Similarly to the prisoner’s dilemma, there will be two (types of) players, providers and consumers, with two different strategies: to behave trustworthy or not. Different payoffs are obtained by each player depending on its selected strategy and the other player strategy. These payoffs will determine the dynamics of the game. Next, it is presented an applied analysis on the situation of Airbnb in Barcelona, using data extracted from its web page. This applied approach focus on those variables containing information about trust. We will see how these variables are related to other important factors in the business model of Airbnb, such as price.